At once, Peter left everything he had and everything he had known to follow Jesus. Too often we can waver about making such a commitment to God. Too often we can try to pretend that we need to be perfect before we can come to the perfector of our faith. No such pretense with Peter. God called him and he answered.
But as his walk with Jesus develops before us in the Gospels, we can see the flaws in the armor. When he sees Jesus walking on the water he correctly asks the Lord to bid him to come out to Him. He recognizes that anything is possible with God! He recognizes the ultimate sovereignty of Jesus over all natural circumstances. Yet contributing to the legacy of an unstable character, he begins to sink as soon as he took his eyes off of Jesus and onto the wind and the waves. Here was the response of Jesus:
Jesus immediately reached out and grabbed him. "You have so little faith," Jesus said. "Why did you doubt me?" Matthew 14: 31 (NLT)
Yet still Jesus would always give him another chance. A new start. Time and again we would see the inconsistency in the character of Peter. Maybe we relate to Peter on some level today. Walking with God, learning from Him, yet still having so much of our own agenda involved. The 16th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew highlights these inconsistencies. First, Jesus asks the Apostles who they think He is and Peter correctly observes that He is the Christ. Here was the response of Jesus:
Jesus replied, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah. Matthew 16: 17-20 (NIV)
This had to have been the pinnacle in Peter's life up to this point. He must have been feeling as if he had arrived. As if to highlight his inconsistencies, Matthew then tells another story about how Jesus finally tells the disciples that He must be crucified. Peter, having just done so much right; actually rebukes Jesus:
Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. "Never, Lord!" he said. "This shall never happen to you!" Jesus turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns." Matthew 16: 22-23 (NIV)
Isn't that often at the center of our problems too? When we can't seem to stop a bad habit such as smoking or drinking isn't it that we are placing our human concerns or desires ahead of God's? The things which we seek to "resolve" each New Year are probably directly correlated to the things we have the most difficult time placing God ahead of. Like Peter before us, we are marked with such drastic inconsistencies, yet God is always there to provide a new start for us. And Peter would soon need a big one.
Peter, in a show of pride and bravado, claims to Jesus that he will never fall away from Him. Jesus plainly tells him that he will actually deny knowing Him before the rooster crows two times. Our key verse captures the end result of this prediction by Jesus. Peter, harassed by onlookers to the arrest of Jesus not only denies knowing Jesus but calls down curses upon himself in order to do so. It is perhaps the saddest or lowest point in Peter's life. It is a feeling I am sure a lot of us can relate to. We had already been called by God. We have already answered. We are saved by His blood and are in covenant relationship with Him as was Peter the night of his denials. Yet when push comes to shove, we can fall away also. We can take our eyes off of Jesus and sink in our surroundings. We can tell God He is wrong; like Peter tried to do when he rebuked Him. We can deny Him and His power in our lives perhaps even at the cost of cursing ourselves. When you look at your New Year's resolutions realize that they are all things God can easily accomplish in us if we would simply not deny Him or His power. If we realize that by denying Him we are actually cursing ourselves to continued misery in not meeting success in the resolution. The issue is not making a resolution but in whom you make it. Under whose power are you trying to resolve changing something?
